Researchers (Hooten WM, Townsend CO, Decker PA) from the Departments of Anesthesiology and Psychiatry and Psychology at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine (Rochester, USA) have published an article in December’s issue of Pain Medicine in which they discuss gender differences in physical and emotional functioning present among patients with fibromyalgia undergoing multidisciplinary pain rehabilitation.
In the study, 33 men with fibromyalgia admitted to a multidisciplinary pain rehabilitation center, at a tertiary referral medical center, were matched to 33 women with fibromyalgia for age, treatment dates, and program completion status. The patients were put through a 3-week outpatient multidisciplinary pain rehabilitation program based on a cognitive-behavioral model that incorporates analgesic medication withdrawal.
The Multidimensional Pain Inventory (MPI), Short Form-36 Health Status Questionnaire (SF-36), Coping Strategies Questionnaire-Catastrophizing subscale (CSQ-C), and the Center for Epidemiologic Studies-Depression scale (CES-D) were administered before and after treatment. The numbers of patients using opioids, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), and benzodiazepines before and after treatment were compared.
The study found that prior to treatment, the MPI and SF-36 scores revealed that men had lower health perception and more physical limitations while women had greater life interference due to pain. The overall differences between all pre- and post-treatment outcome measures demonstrated the patients had a statistically significant response to the treatment. However, men had lower post-treatment scores on the SF-36 health perception, role limitations-physical, and social functioning subscales. Significant within-gender reductions in opioid analgesic, NSAID, and benzodiazepine use were observed but no significant between-gender differences were identified.
The authors concluded that the study results “support the hypothesis that pretreatment gender differences are present among fibromyalgia patients undergoing multidisciplinary pain rehabilitation and post-treatment gender differences persist despite improvements in physical and emotional functioning.”
